Who You Are Does Not Sleep

Q: What trips me up on this everyday awareness is that when I sleep, it seems gone. There doesn't seem to be any everyday awareness there. Help.

A: I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to answer your question. I don’t want to talk about concepts – which is all I would be doing if I gave you the kind of answer you want – because that would only lead you back to the belief that concepts and answers have value. Besides, concepts are boring to talk about.

So I’m going to have to give you the kind of answer you don’t want, which is no answer at all. I think that the problem behind your question probably comes from the word “awareness.” It suggests something happening in the brain, and so it is logical to ask, as you did: what happens to this brain function when the brain sleeps?

But all this points out is that “awareness” is an inaccurate and confusing word, and this is why so many different words are used to point to this which cannot be described: beingness, presence, oneness, God, clarity, space, wholeness, emptiness, the unborn. So really, it’s best to let go of the word “awareness” and what it implies, and know that if any word leads you to believe we’re talking about the brain, then the word itself is misleading. If we were substituting the word “God,” I don’t think you would ask me what happens to God when you are asleep.

Maybe it’s the word “everyday” that led to your question. What is being pointed to is indeed your everyday experience, so again, you’re being encouraged to drop the word, but not your experience of it. What is being pointed to is always in clear view, and so we call it “everyday.”  Whatever it is that you are experiencing right now, that’s it. Can you call it everyday awareness? Can you call it present beingness? It’s really beyond the task of language.

It’s best to leave a place in your mind where “this” is. Rather than try to fill up this space with a label, like “everyday awareness” (and then have to come up with the logical behaviors of this “thing” called everyday awareness), just let there be no label, no mental picture. Let “this” be unlabeled, unnamed, unformed in your mind. It is no thing. The words used in books and speech are not meant to nail down a picture of what this is – they are only meant to point you towards what is brewing in you – a recognition of this “unformed” as your very own self. Then, no more words are needed.

The indescribable unformed does not sleep. God does not sleep. Oneness, wholeness, emptiness do not sleep. The body sleeps – the brain sleeps – but who you are does not sleep, nor does it die. Look right now and see that in you which does not sleep.